Skillful Death (65 page)

He closes the hatch above us. The only light is coming from flickering old bulbs mounted to the plank walls. I can barely see the rungs. Peter almost steps on my hand.

I can’t move fast enough so I place my hands wide on the rungs. His feet are in the middle. Soon, he’s nearly kicking me in the face.

“Hey, slow down,” I call up.

“Move faster!” he shouts.

Below me, I hear one of the other Providentials drop to the ground. I look down and I can see the bottom. As soon as the other guy is out of the way, I jump. I figure It’s better than getting kicked in face by Peter. I’m just barely correct. It was a little far to jump and my ankles flare with pain. I move back as Peter comes down and joins.

We’re standing in a little chamber with a dirt floor, plank walls, and a plank ceiling. A couple of bare lightbulbs hang down, giving us our only illumination. Every few seconds, the bulbs flicker and dirt sifts down through the planks. I hear a distant rumbling that coincides with the flickers.

“What’s happening up there?” I ask.

“An inconvenience,” Peter says. “That’s all.”

I hear a crash from the direction of the ladder. A square of light appears on the floor. The hatch must have blown open. Water falls down the shaft.

“Let’s move,” Peter says.

One of the other Providentials leads the way. There’s a small passage that leads from the corner of the room. Before Peter pushes me into the hole, I look back and see a tree limb, heavy with wet leaves, plunge down through the ladder’s shaft. Torn and busted rungs from the ladder cascade down behind it.

“How are we going to get out?” I ask.

Peter just keeps pushing me.
 

You have to hunch to make it through this passage. It moves slightly uphill for a while and then takes a bend before it levels off. A wider hall branches off to the right and descends, but we climb a short ladder, cross a horizontal span, and then climb down a ladder into another room.

“What is this place?” We’re all standing in the next room now.

“It’s where we live when those damn village-dwellers decide to ravage the forest,” Peter says.

“Who? The other Providentials?” I ask.

“Yes,” Peter says. “They think they can drive us from the forest with this weak display of power, but we could survive down here forever.”

I don’t think the attack has anything to do with wanting to drive anyone from the forest. I think the logicals have timed this attack just to drive the creatives underground so they can leave their stronghold without fear of attack.

“What about your soldiers?” I ask.

“Who?”

“The fighters who work for you? Like the ones who put that bag on my head.”

“They’re fine,” he says.

“Yes, but where are they?”

“In their shelters, I’m sure.”

“How long will the attack last?”

“It varies. A week is the longest. We can easily survive that long in our tunnels. We have provisions stockpiled for ten times that long. They have no idea of our level of preparation.”

“But while you’re down here, they are free to do whatever they like up there?”

“It’s a maelstrom,” he says. “They can’t travel through the forest during one of their own attacks. Trees are being uprooted and thrown into the sky. Branches are smashing down. That would be suicide. Our tents are ripped from their footings and tossed by the wind. That’s why we have no permanent structures up there. Everything is disposable. It’s all a replaceable illusion. The forest will be regenerated by the morning following the attack, and we’ll have our tents up that same afternoon. We’re completely impervious.”

Some of the other Providentials nod in appreciation of their own ingenuity.

“What if they’ve simply driven you underground so you can’t go to meet Constantine?”

Peter’s smile fades as he considers the question.

“But how would they know?”

“As I told you before, you have a mole in your organization.” I say it loud enough for the other Providentials to hear me. Eyes dart around. These people are not shrewd. When they look at each other, I see who each person distrusts. Peter glances at the squat man before his eyes return to me.

He pulls me a little distance from the group, which is hard to do in such close quarters.

“If this meeting with Constantine is so important, I cannot let a spy derail it. You must tell me. When is the meeting?”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t received the psychic signal yet. What’s worse is I can’t receive it underground. I have to get to the surface,” I say. Of course, I’m making this up. The entire story about the signal is made up, but I’m happy to have an excuse to force the Providentials out of this warren.
 

“We can attempt to escape the radius of the attack, but it will take some time,” he says.

“We need to hurry.”

“I don’t know who to trust. You and I will leave alone. Perhaps we’ll take just one other; I know I can trust her.”

“We have to take them all, even if one is the mole,” I say. “It’s the only way you’ll be able to determine who the mole is.”

I hope he doesn’t question the logic behind my statement. I don’t have any logic behind my statement. But, as I thought, this man is not shrewd. He also seems afraid that someone will guess that he’s not shrewd, so he doesn’t question my statement at all.

“Of course,” he says. Peter turns back to the group of Providentials. “We have to get back to the surface so Malcolm can receive his signal. We’ll take the transverse tunnels to the old mines and then escape through the quarry.”

The squat man shakes his head before he speaks. “Those tunnels haven’t been tested in years. They’re likely to have collapsed.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “We’ll assess the tunnels when we get there.”

One of the women takes the lead. She opens a hatch in the ceiling and pulls herself up to a ladder. Nobody speaks. They just follow. Peter takes the rear and shepherds me in front of him.

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The tunnels begin as terrible and they get worse as we go. It’s best when we’re climbing. At least then you can spread out to your full height, but you’re always dealing with someone’s feet right in your face. Below, Peter is impatient and he pushes at my feet.

The first few horizontal tunnels are lined with planks all around. As the storm rages above us, the ground shakes and dirt sifts down between the boards. My instinct is to look up when I hear the sounds. That’s a terrible instinct. I get dirt in my eyes several times before I learn.

After a couple twists and turns we’re in another small room with a vertical shaft in the center of the ceiling. We don’t have to send someone up to check the weather. We can hear the thrashing wind from the bottom of the ladder. The guide woman pulls boards from the wall, revealing a derelict tunnel. This one has bricks for walls and the ceiling is the underside of jagged rocks. It’s like it was dug under a massive slab, and the path of the tunnel follows the contours of the rock. From floor to ceiling, the tunnel is only a couple of feet tall. We’re going to pass through this one on our knees.

Here and there, the walls have caved in and we have to crawl over dirt and loose bricks. My knees are banged up within minutes and my hand throbs from the splinter. I should have picked it out when we were stopped, but it didn’t seem important at the time. It’s just a minor annoyance, but I can’t stop looking at my palm.
 

It’s not like I can see much. A few of the Providentials are pushing flashlights along the ground, but there are no lights built into these tunnels.

It feels like we’re crawling forever. My shoulders ache, my knees are bruised, and I keep hitting my back on the ceiling.
 

“It’s blocked,” the woman calls out from up ahead. Her voice sounds muffled, like someone’s pressing a pillow against her face as she talks. When we all stop, it’s so quiet I realize I can hear my own breathing. That’s an unsettling feeling, as if we’re all buried and soon we’ll breathe only dirt.

“Can you dig?” Peter asks.

The tunnel is so tight, I’m not sure I can turn around. Are we going to have to back all the way out of this tomb? An image pops into my head—what if the tunnel has collapsed behind us as well? It’s a logical assumption. The earth has been shaking and we’ve seen a lot of the walls caved in. Who knows if those bricks fell ten years ago or earlier today? This could be a tiny tube of air we’re rapidly consuming.

“I think so,” she says. Her voice sounds so muffled. I can’t stop picturing her drowning in loose dirt. What if her digging causes more of the tunnel to cave in? Time seems to stretch out forever as we wait for word from up front. I can only see the backside of the Providential in front of me, and I don’t even know his name.

“Maybe we need to turn back,” I say to Peter.

“I don’t think we can,” he says.

“What? What does that mean?”

I’m starting to panic. Knowing you’re about to panic doesn’t help to alleviate the feeling. It’s rising in my chest like a hot red wave. I keep feeling like I should be able to out-think it, but it’s coming faster on the swells of my panting.

“Malcolm,” Peter says from behind me.

He puts his hand on the back of my calf and I spring away from his touch, ramming my back into the rock above.

“It’s no use,” the woman says. “The walls are falling in as fast as I’m digging.”

My brain overloads and I fall forward onto my face. I’m breathing like a freight train. In my imagination, I can see all the oxygen being sucked from the tunnel to power my useless fright. My arms go numb.

“Relax, Malcolm,” Peter says. “You can’t die here.”

“What?” I manage to ask during a quick exhale.

“You can’t die in here. I know it to be true.”

“Nonsense.”

“He’s right,” another voice says from in front of us. It’s one of the men, but I don’t know which. I haven’t heard either of them speak enough to connect their voices to their faces.

These people are crazy. I don’t know if they’ll ever die; they certainly don’t have a good grasp on mortality. According to Bud, the old blind man was an old blind man two-hundred years ago, so who knows how old these people are. Knocking around for all those years must put a weird spin on your perspective. It might even make you casual about being trapped in a tiny tunnel a hundred feet below the ground while a maelstrom tears apart the world above.

With their longevity, I would think this scenario might frighten them even more. Worse than dying in this tunnel, they could be trapped in here, unable to die and slowly going insane.

“It’s a tight fit, but I think we can make it,” the woman calls back.

The waiting is even more terrible now that I’m picturing her trying to wriggle through a hole. I’m anxious for my turn to try and I’m hoping that the squat man doesn’t get stuck in there. Finally, I see the feet ahead of me shuffling forward. Of course, we only move a couple of feet before we have to stop for the next wriggler, but at least it’s progress.

As I wait, I’m certain that the air is growing thin. I can barely take in enough oxygen to stay conscious. It feels like I’m breathing through a straw. I want to claw past the man in front of me and then whomever else is blocking the path. I hear Peter’s steady breathing behind me and I resent him sharing the precious resource.
 

Finally, it’s me. I’m the next one to the blockage. I can see the lights of the Providentials on the other side. The hole I’m meant to climb through is a tiny crescent moon of light. How did the squat one make it through here? I have to turn my head to the side to begin the attempt. There’s no room to look forward. That’s a terrible feeling—trying to climb forward when you can’t look to see where you’re going. I claw at the soft walls and loose bricks.
 

My mind flies back to a memory of digging. I was naked and pulling myself up through moist dirt and a tenacious network of tree roots. When was that? I can smell the rich dirt and taste it forcing its way into my mouth as try to escape the loamy grave. It must have been a dream. I would certainly remember being buried alive, wouldn’t I?

When I pull my head past the collapsed part of the tunnel, I suck in a relieved breath. My feet flail behind me. I’ve got nothing to push on. My arms are pinched to my sides. For a second, I believe I’m stuck. Then, one inch at a time, I move forward until my arms are released. I tug at the walls and flop through to the other side of the hole. The Providentials in front of me shuffle on. I only have to wait a second for Peter. He makes quick work of sliding past the blockage.
 

We crawl fast to catch up with the group.

The light is brighter up ahead. The tunnel is a little wider and I feel like I can breathe deeply once more. What really removes the sense of claustrophobia is the sound. With more room for the sound to bounce around, it no longer feels like I have cotton stuffed in my ears. The ceiling pulls away. Here, it’s an archway of brick instead of the underside of some vein of rock. I could almost crouch and walk upright.

We emerge into the back of a cave carved into powdery gray stone. I stand up and grip my face in my hands. With a shudder, the last of my panic washes away. It’s flushed from my bloodstream by the relief of fresh air. I walk to the edge of the cave and look out on a glorious scene.

Our cave is cut into the wall of a deep quarry. Above, trees reach out with hungry branches to absorb all the sunlight above the quarry. Below, emerald green water sits still in a deep pool. I can’t tell if the water is so green because of some mineral or because it’s reflecting the filtered light from the trees. Either way, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I feel reborn.
 

I untuck my shirt and shake about a pound of loose dirt from inside my clothes. I must look as filthy as the Providentials who stand in a circle, holding conference near the back of the cave.

Peter breaks from the others and approaches. I’m still looking out over the quarry.

We need to know when the meeting will take place.